Halibut Hangar

Originally Published May 16, 2008; Updated and Republished September 05, 2008; Updated and Republished September 15, 2008; Updated and Republished December 21, 2008; Updated and Republished December 31, 2008; Updated and Republished January 13, 2009; Updated and Republished March 06, 2009; Updated and Republished March 30, 2009; Updated and Republished April 06, 2009; Updated and Republished April 16, 2009:

Yesterday, House Armed Services Committee (HASC) completed its mark-up process for the fiscal year 2009 Defense Authorization Bill (H.R. 5658), providing $531.4 billion in budget authority. The HASC 2009 budget includes $4,145 million procurement dollars, for the Navy’s Virginia-class submarine program.

USS Virginia SSN 774

HASC added $722 million dollars to the Navy's request of $3,423.5 million dollars. The additional HASC procurement dollars aim to accelerate and increase the submarine’s annual production rate from one to two⁸. General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman now jointly produce one submarine per year under a teaming agreement, which HASC proposes to continue for FY 2009 (see also Virginia Class Submarine - Defense Authorization FY10 and On FPI Contracting And The Virginia Class Submarine).

The Virginia-class submarine program has been plagued by cost overruns. Many think the submarine's proposed price of $2 billion per copy must be significantly reduced for post Milestone III limited production and production to be sustainable¹.

Virginia-class Submarine General Characteristics

• Manufacturers: General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman
• Displacement (tons): submerged - 7,800; surface - 7,300 (est)
• Length: (feet/meter): 377/114.9
• Beam: (feet/meter): 34/10.3
• Speed (knots/mph/kph): submerged – 34/39.1/62.9; surface – 14/16.1/25.9
• Propulsion: single shaft, pump-jet, 44,000 shp
• Power plant: S9G, advanced breeder²
• Dive Depth (feet/meter): 1,600/487.6
• Torpedo Tubes: 4; 21”
• Armaments: Mark 48 Torpedo (heavy); Block IV Cruise and Harpoon Missile; Mark 67 SLMM; littoral mining
• Standard Crew Complement: 134 men³

Web:

• UPDATED 04/16/2008 Undersea Warfare, Three Article Series.

  The editor of Undersea Warfare, Molly Little, was invited to take an overnight cruise on the Virginia-class submarine USS North Carolina—she provides a general overview of the submarine class in a short article, some photos from her cruise in another, and stenos for outgoing Navy program manager Dave Johnson as he describes the efforts to make the Virginia-class affordable

  It’s probably not lack of Navy or contractor effort at trying to perform magic, but rather a failed fairy tale. The pumpkin was turned into a coach and is now turning back into a pumpkin—who’s Molly Little, where’s Cinderella, her magic will prevent this coach from becoming a pumpkin. Hey, Molly how about an Undersea Warfare series exploring whether women are qualified to serve on Virginia-class submarines.

• UPDATED 04/06/2009 Reuters, Gates to propose U.S. defense add-ons, not just cuts. (Gates' Budget Press Briefing)

  • DefenseLink, Summary Documents, FY 2009 Unclassified Defense Budget.

    The Fiscal Year 2009 budget proposes one Virginia Class submarine (VCS) at a total eye-popping cost of $2,863,014,000:

    • PLAN COSTS: $76,185,000
    • BASIC CONST/CONVERSION: $1,900,345,000
    • TECHNOLOGY INSERTION: $101,267,000
    • ELECTRONICS: $242,085,000
    • PROPULSION EQUIPMENT: $462,931,000
    • HM&E (Hull, Mechanical, and Electrical): $48,901,000
    • OTHER COST: $31,300,000
    • ORDNANCE: $ 0 (cruise missiles, mines, torpedoes, and other things that go boom purchased separately)
    • ESCALATION: $0
    • TOTAL ONE VCS: $2,863,014,000⁹

    Unclassified line item, FY2009 Virginia-class submarine procurement budget (pdf).

    The 2009 budget has $1,316,500,000⁹ for advance VCS hardware procurement, too.

• UPDATED 03/30/2009 Reuters, Nearly 7 in 10 major U.S. arms programs over budget.

  General Accounting Office (GAO) is out with its assessment of a whopping 96 major defense acquisition programs, forty-two percent of them are at least twenty-five percent over budget—at an eye-popping current cost of $2.718B dollars, each Virginia-class submarine is $518M over the latest "promised target" cost.

  The manufacturers are phasing in various cost cutting measures aimed at reducing costs to their $2.2B target:

  

  Two pages for the Virginia-class Submarine Program Assessment from the 190 page GAO Assessments of Major Weapon Programs, GAO-09-326SP.

• UPDATED 01/13/2009 CBO⁷, Long-Term Implications of the Fiscal Year 2009 Future Years Defense Program (1.6M pdf)

  "The Navy’s short-term goal is to reduce the price of the new Virginia class attack submarine to $2.2 billion (in 2009 dollars) and to increase procurement to two per year starting in 2011. CBO projects that the Navy’s current plans for sustaining the attack [SSN], guided missile [SSGN], and ballistic missile submarine [SSBN] forces would cost, on average, more than $7.2 billion per year over the next two decades, or as much as $8.4 billion annually, including historical cost growth [overruns - cost growth sounds like an achievement!].--CBO⁶--"

  From the below GAO⁷ table we can infer an initial projected cost for a Virginia-class submarine (VCS), in 2001 dollars, at $1.35B [(7.6B - 2.2B)/4]. Applying a factor of .2 results in $1.62B (2009 dollars). Comparing this figure to the target of $2.2B (2009 dollars) each VCS is $580M or 35.8% above the initial projection (assuming the target of $2.2B is achieved).

  

  Currently the per VCS cost is $100 - 300M above the target of $2.2B (i.e. costing $2.3 - 2.5B). The Navy expects the multi-year procurement, advanced hardware procurement, and compressed delivery schedule to achieve the target of $2.2B.

• UPDATED 01/08/2008 Aviation Week, USN Signs Major Virginia Sub Contract

• UPDATED 12/31/2008 US House, Joe Courtney et al. Letter To President-elect Obama, Annotated (750K pdf). Representative Courtney has coordinated a letter, signed by himself and 27 other representatives⁵.

  The representatives are urging Obama to preserve the Virginia-class submarine platform and its anticipated two submarine per year production rate, including multi-year contracting and advance procurements.

  General Dynamics Electric Boat Division is located in Groton Connecticut, part of Joe Courtney's second district.

  • UPDATED 01/12/2009 Rep. Courtney Spearheads Bipartisan Effort Urging President-elect’s Continued Support of Virginia-Class Submarine Program. Includes an html version of Courtney et al letter.

    • UPDATED 01/12/2009 Rep. Courtney Letter Urging President-elect’s Continued Support of Virginia-Class Submarine Program. This is a regular pdf of the Courtney letter (text and notes only), which presents a much smaller footprint (14K) than the "image pdf" (3.5M) of the original letter.

      A regular pdf, in addition to a smaller file footprint enables the use of accessibility technology (e.g. a voice reader)—some of our submariners aren't as young as they use to be.

• UPDATED 12/21/2008 NYT Editorial, How to Pay for a 21st-Century Military

  "Halt production of the Virginia class sub. Ten of these unneeded attack submarines — modeled on the cold-war-era Seawolf, whose mission was to counter Soviet attack and nuclear launch submarines — have already been built. The program is little more than a public works project to keep the Newport News, Va., and Groton, Conn., naval shipyards in business."--NYT--

  It's no accident that Navy acquisition is planning to purchase 10 8 more Virginia class submarines (20 18 total) before the next administration takes office.

  • UPDATED 12/23/2008 NavyTimes, Navy orders 8 new Virginia-class subs
  • UPDATED 12/22/2008 Reuters, General Dynamics and Northrop awarded submarine deal (Fixed Price Incentive Contract⁴—N00024-09-C-2104)

  It will be a shame to unnecessarily waste so many dollars in contract cancellation and close-out.

• UPDATED 9/15/2008 Senate votes to begin work on 2009 Defense Authorization Bill; See S.3001 for text of legislation—Subtitle C--Navy Programs--Sec. 131. is the advanced procurement for the Virginia-class submarine. See Roll Call Vote 197 for official tally. See H.R 5658 for House companion legislation.

• UPDATED 09/05/2008 Navy's Newest Submarine Class Conducts Tomahawk Cruise Missile Launches.This Navy reporting does not state what Tomahawk cruise missile variant(s) was/were launched, whether those variants were block III and/or IV or whether all or part of the launches were successful.

  It's unclear what "boundaries pushing" Rear Admiral William Hilarides (PMS-PEO 450) is referring to—however, launching cruise missiles from a submarine is not boundary pushing.

  The current Los Angles class submarines, SSN 688 through 773, have been successfully launching all Tomahawk cruise missile variants through Block III, for many years.

  • UPDATED 04/20/2009 Hilarides may be referring to the Submarine Combat Control System (CCS) MK2 ECP 4 or 5 upgrade for block IV tactical cruise missile interface? If so, nothing boundary pushing here (which is not to say simple) just splitting the old CCS bus, ensuring a non-proprietary architecture, and sandwiching in some COTS computing horse power to support TacLan (aka TBIP) and related system consoles?

• UPDATED 06/18/2008 Winter: Fewer Subs For Now. Speaking at the United States Naval War College Secretary of Navy, Donald C. Winter said he does not support increasing the Virginia-class submarine production rate (from one to two per year).

  ”There is no silver-bullet solution to this financial problem,...We must figure out how to build a more cost-effective fleet and build a fleet that is less costly to operate.”--Donald C. Winter--

Res:

• UPDATED 04/06/2009 DefenseLink, Summary Documents, FY 2009 Unclassified Defense Budget.

  The Fiscal Year 2009 budget proposes one Virginia Class submarine.

• Northrop Grumman Marketing Data for U.S. Navy's Virginia-class Attack Submarine Program and Promotional Photos.

-----notes-----

1. The submarine is currently costing $2.5 $2.8 billion per submarine.

2. Likely, the fertile actinoid Thorium 232 in a heavy water moderator, using an advanced fuel rod geometry (i.e. high power density) configuration.

3. Note two, concerning women on Virginia-class submarines has been removed—see comments.

The Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) has recommended to the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations that they commit to the integration of women into the submarine community and develop an implementation plan for doing so.

DACOWITS has also recommended that the Secretary of the Navy direct redesign of Virginia-class submarines to accommodate mixed gender crews.

4. Each submarine is purchased without weapons for a fixed price of say $1.65 $2.8 billion current dollars (weapons are purchased separately for, say another $.850 billion).

The contractor is then "incentivized" with additional dollars, as a function of capital investment (which is huge for shipbuilding) depending on negotiated performance goals.

Contracting on a fixed price basis without an established and fixed submarine design is illusory. The fixed price effectively becomes cost reimbursement each time the design is changed (this applies to the submarine's weapons as well as the submarine itself).

It is useful to use total cost of ownership (aka life-cycle costs) figures as opposed to any single announced price tag. An announced price tag always comes with so many assumptions about future events that it rarely if ever is meaningful or represents the true price, even within large margins of error! (see also On FPI Contracting And The Virginia Class Submarine)

5. Representatives James Langevin, J. Randy Forbes, Brad Ellsworth, Robert Wittman, Betty Sutton, Rosa DeLauro, Robert Brady, Patrick Kennedy, Henry Brown, Robin Hayes, Time Ryan, Michael Doyle, Michael Michaud, Carol Shea-Porter, John Culberson, Paul Hodes, Peter King, John Larson, Jack Kingston, Bob Goodlatte, Timothy Bishop, Christopher Murphy, Madeleine Bordallo, Robert Scott, Norman Dicks, Carolyn McCarthy, and Elijah Cummings.

6. Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Long-Term Implications of the Fiscal Year 2009 Future Years Defense Program(1.6M pdf), January 2009

7. The GAO and CBO costs figures infer nothing about the Navy's desired or projected submarine force structure, submarine presence, mission objectives, or assessed threat.

Each of these must be publicly revisited, reexamined, rethought, and thoroughly understood to prevent "sinking" (wasting) scarce and unavailable resources.

The goal is not, as some have suggested, utilizing excess shipbuilding capacity—although preserving a minimum shipbuilding capacity is a goal.

Rather the goal is the pursuit of the lowest cost submarine force structure that maximizes the minimal submarine presence required to precisely respond to well-defined missions highly correlated with accurately assessed threats to our national security.

There's not an admiral (submarine) in our Navy that doesn't want or prefer an on-demand worldwide submarine presence—24/7, zero transit time. Asked if he or she prefers 80 submarines to 55 or 35 or 26, guess the response. Ask if he or she can think of one more mission they'd perform, regardless of how many they're currently performing, guess the response.

Most admirals won’t even need to check with their Navy captains who are nothing if not infinite generators of preferred, desired, and creative missions.

8. UPDATED 03/06/2009 The production rate of two per year is likely based on the key judgment that five SSN submarines are required to hold one deployed SSBN at risk.

What country is deploying hostile SSBN submarines that would support such an SSN production rate (we have allied SSBN colliding with each other)?

Our Navy has disclosed to FAS's Hans Kristensen that China made zero SSBN patrols (XIA or Shang JIN) in 2008 and a dozen "attack submarine" patrols (see Chinese Submarine Patrols Doubled in 2008). Unfortunately, our Navy did not define an "attack submarine" (SS or SSN or submarine class, Ming, Kilo, Song, Romeo, Shang, Yuan etc.) or "patrol" (see Misblog, China Submarine Force Structure 2010 Projection).

No American desires to place our Navy at risk of inadequate assets to counter actual or significant probability threats, but nor do we what to create threats where none exists

It's risible for our Navy to spend $2.5 $2.8 billion dollars (any dollars actually) for a single solution weapons platform (e.g. Virginia-class submarine), without publicly defining and disclosing the perceived, judged, estimated, or real threat.

Happily, CINPAC (Admiral Keating) was in China last month seeking to better understand, clarify, and mitigate the risk of misperception, misjudgment, misestimation—it will be interesting to learn what he has discovered.

Even better a China-American working group has reportedly arisen out of the meetings—hopefully their ongoing work will routinely be made public. (see United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, March 04, 2009 Hearing on China’s Military and Security Activities Abroad for more information on China-U.S. current relationship. Particularly intriguing are statement by Susan L. Craig (pdf) and Paul J. Smith (pdf).)

9. Assuming the need for some quantity of a broadband (wide spectrum), low db (stealthy) nuclear attack submarine platform (a dubious assumption) the VCS's $2.863 billion dollar price tag is a long way from the initial promised price, the most recently announced target price, or a sustainable production (post Milestone III) price.

Vice Admiral Bernard J. McCullough (CNO Cap & Res) and Ms. Allison Stiller (Deputy Asst. SecNav) in April 2009 joint testimony before HAC restated the Navy's expectation of a $2 billion (FY2005 dollars) price target, for 2012 submarines delivered under the December 2008 $14 billion dollar FPI contract. The expected target price likely depends on many unstated assumptions like a two VCSs per year production rate beginning 2011 and a minimum production quantity of 30 VCS submarines and ? (see also On FPI Contracting And The Virginia Class Submarine).

Example Non-Design Change VCS Realized Cost Reduction:

"Adaptation of laser image projection technology for locating attachments and penetrations on the interior hull of the submarine. Until this development, this was a labor-intensive process using paper templates and string measurements. Based on attaching 2,300 hangers and installing 4,500 studs in 13 hull cylinders in a pilot demonstration, a savings of 7700 labor hours per ship is now being realized – reducing labor by 85 percent compared to the previous method. Relying on digitized CAD model design information, a small computer controlled projector is used to visually mark locations on the inside cylinder wall where attachments are required. The only hand labor required is the actual shooting of the welding stud."--March 2009 DoD Annual Report--

Example Design Change VCS Expected Cost Reduction: VCS Sonar Dome/Hydrophones, Change to Fewer but Increased Diameter Missile Tubes (standardized for items like cartridge of cruise missiles, Seahorse unmanned underwater autonomous vehicles (UUAV) and special forces operation hardware and personnel).

Part of the Navy's effort to standardize and modularize submarine manufacture in support of its ambitious network centric warfare model.

The Navy has budgeted $2.107 billion for the one FY2009 VCS—$2.863 billion minus the already paid advanced hardware procurement of $.756 billion.

It's not obvious what the FY 2009 $1.317 billion dollars for advanced hardware procurement relates to since only $.720 billion is estimated for FY2009. In the unlikely event that manufacturing is increased from the current one VCS per year too two in 2011 then $1.348 billion for advanced hardware procurement would be required in 2010 (assuming planned redesign efforts do not reduce hardware costs).

It's unclear whether and to what extent the planned design changes will be included in the Milestone III testing, evaluation, and certification?